Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai (center) meets with some of the Chibok schoolgirls who escaped.

Photo: Olamikan Gbemiga, Associated Press

Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai (center) meets with some of the...

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Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai gives a press conference on July 14, 2014 after meeting with the Nigerian president in Abuja. Malala on July 14 urged Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to meet with parents of the schoolgirls kidnapped three months ago by Boko Haram. Malala, who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012 and has become a champion for access to schooling, was in Abuja on her 17th birthday to mark the somber anniversary of Boko Haram's April 14 abduction of 276 girls from a secondary school in the northeast Nigerian city of Chibok. AFP PHOTO / WOLE EMMANUELWOLE EMMANUEL/AFP/Getty Images

Photo: Wole Emmanuel, AFP/Getty Images

Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai gives a press...

Image 3 of 3

Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, center, raises her hands with some of the escaped kidnapped school girls of government secondary school Chibok, during a news conference, in Abuja, Nigeria, Monday, July 14, 2014. Yousafzai on Monday won a promise from Nigeria's leader to meet with the parents of some of the 219 schoolgirls held by Islamic extremists for three months. Malala celebrated her 17th birthday on Monday in Nigeria with promises to work for the release of the girls from the Boko Haram movement. (AP Photo/Olamikan Gbemiga)

The Pakistani teen who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012 marked her 17th birthday Monday with a visit to Nigeria and urged Islamic extremists to free the 219 schoolgirls who were kidnapped there, calling them her "sisters."

Malala Yousafzai, who has become an international symbol for women's rights in the face of hard-line Islam, said Nigeria's president promised to meet for the first time with the abducted girls' parents.

"My birthday wish this year is 'Bring Back Our Girls' now and alive," she said, using the social media slogan that has been picked up around the world to demand freedom for the girls, who were abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram in April from a school in the remote northeast Nigerian town of Chibok.

Malala appealed directly to their captors as she held hands with some of the girls who escaped.

"Lay down your weapons. Release your sisters. Release my sisters. Release the daughters of this nation. Let them be free. They have committed no crime."

She added: "You are misusing the name of Islam. ... Islam is a religion of peace."

Malala also spoke against the custom of child brides in her home country, a tradition common in Nigeria, too. Boko Haram has threatened to sell some of the girls as brides if its fighters are not freed.

"Protect girls from cruelty," she said in a speech, explaining that girls should not be forced to marry or to leave school to become brides or to give birth to children "when they themselves are children."

Boko Haram attacks continued over the weekend with witnesses blaming the group for the bombing of a major bridge on a northeast Nigerian highway that further limits access to its base camps in the Sambisa Forest, where it is believed to be holding some of the girls.